Valve adds a new way to filter for discounts during Steam sales

Steam sales can be overwhelming, and any bit of help navigating them is much appreciated. Typically, the games you see featured on the platform’s front page don’t need any introduction, and it can be challenging to find the store’s more compelling discounts. Valve is trying to change that with a new Steam Labs feature called Faceted Browsing that allows you to narrow down what you’re looking for while trying to find discounts during the platform’s marquee sales.

The tool allows you to browse some of Steam’s discounted games using categories such as visuals, themes and moods and features, and you can combine several to find something specific. For instance, ask Steam to showcase third-person sci-fi games and it will highlight Dead Space 3 and Star Wars Battlefront. Faceted Browsing won’t surface every discounted game, but it will highlight some of the more notable ones. To try it out, click on the Steam Labs tab at the top of the interface and then press “Try the Sale Exploration Experiment.”

Building on this year’s Autumn Sale, Valve has also introduced new genre and thematic categories. You’ll find these if you scroll down the main store page beyond the featured franchises section. The additional ones come after Valve found a lot of success with its initial ones. “We found these themed pages drove more game store page visits during the sale than all but one other Steam store point of discovery,” the company said.